There is something highly unsettling about developing economic survival strategies. I've always been quite adept at budgeting and saving and generally doing a lot with a little. I seem to choose careers based on how little they will pay me. But now, as I have had a consistent $24 in my bank account for a couple of months, I have started doing things like paying the minimum on my credit cards, deciding which bills can be paid late without penalty and weighing the cost of a late fee against the cost of an overdraft charge. What is frustrating in this is twofold. For one, I have been working since I was 14 and have always been able to provide for myself without a problem. For two, I have now become a suspicious person. I pay late. I have overdraft charges. I pay the allowable minimum. These are not fiscally responsible attributes. They are not responsible attributes in general. They are suspect.
As is asking for samples of my favorite perfume from several different stores in order to eschew buying my expensive bottled scent. Or using Borders as a public library. Or squinting at strangers like I am preparing for a knife fight because I haven't had an eye exam in four years and my prescription is doing nothing.
And living in this smog of suspicion, I have also started doing things like hiding the face of my government-issued debit card from public view. It is the easily recognizable Scarlet U for unemployment. Part of my embarrassment is that I do not want to have been branded a part of this club. But the other part is that I don't want people thinking I am going on a spending spree with government money. (That said, I do have a fantasy about winning the lottery, and I think it would be really funny if I bought the ticket with my government-issued money. But I don't think the government would find this as amusing as I do.) I really do not spend much money on anything. I don't smoke. I don't drink much or often. I don't even eat junk food, and my Starbucks allotment also pays for internet service. I do, however, buy gifts. And while I do need and WANT lots of things, I can't justify a new pair of workout pants as much as I can a well-timed thank you gift. Even if my workout pants have holes thinly bound with safety pins.
Anyway, recently, a colleague of mine did something really nice and wrote a recommendation letter for me. And I needed to thank her. For most recommenders, I find gift cards to somewhere they like to go, or is near to their office or offers products they enjoy, etc. Generally this is because gift cards are easy to send in the mail. But K lives in Chicago, so I could play around a little more with my gratitude. And K happens to be very creative as well. She sews, which is something I do not understand at all. (Not that she can do it, but HOW to do it at all. I took Home Ec for six weeks in 8th grade and sewed a very lumpy cow that had horns, but somehow no ears. I also took Spanish for six weeks that year and all I remember is "vamos a la playa." Which, seeing as I lived in a landlocked state at the time means that six weeks is not enough time to retain quality information.) K also happens to be obsessed with buttons. She even made a necklace with buttons instead of beads and it is awesome. I also like buttons but can't do much with them. I have always wanted to sew a bunch of buttons on throw pillows and put them on the couch. So I have a little box that holds every button I've ever collected. Mostly the extra buttons from sweaters and jackets that I never use. Or buttons that have fallen off and become lost causes due to my sewing handicap. (Hence the safety pins on my workout clothes.)
For a Thank You Gift for K, I figured I would use some of these buttons that were starting to lift the lid of their box and spill out, begging for a needle and thread or a second coming as jewelry. I thought I might use them to fill the bottom of a clear vase or as some kind of display. I decided Crate and Barrel would be the best destination for this idea. I love Crate and Barrel. Partly this is because we did not have C+B in my hometown. It was big news when we got the Gap. And not surprising when the Gap left a few years later. The idea of C+B was the same to me as Saks, Tiffany's and FAO Schwartz: it was fancy and out of reach. So when I moved to Chicago and actually WENT to a C+B, I was elated to find I could actually BUY things there. I bought myself a set of stemless champagne flutes that I used as wine glasses there to celebrate this fact. (I bought them there, I didn't use them there. I wasn't suspect then.)
In all reality, C+B is extremely affordable for certain things. Like glassware, kitchen gadgets and napkins. Or candle holders. At C+B I found the Trix candle holder for K. In the display, the store had arranged orange pebbles in the bottom of the glass, at which point I thought, "Buttons!" So I put a tealight in the candle part, and filled the bottom with assorted buttons. The great thing about this gift is that K actually wanted a new candle for her house, and I didn't even know. The other great thing about this gift for me is that I spent $5. And I may have used my government-issued debit card to do it.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
The Chicago Gift
I have begun to resemble Little Critter. You know, the mishap-prone furry character from the Mercer Mayer books? The one with the straggly straight hair and the purple eyelids and the permanent look of confusion? That’s me. And this is because I have begun to walk everywhere.
When working at a bar, there is this added benefit of being able to move around more than the average person. I wore a pedometer during a few shifts while I was in my “pedometer phase,” (which ended only when I entered my “I lose everything phase,”) and it seems that I averaged three miles per shift. Which is not bad.
If left to my own devices, meaning if I had loads of time and money, I would probably not drive anywhere. I have been to France three times, twice by myself. (Taking these two trips makes me feel like I have lots of time and money because really, who gets to take long trips with no agenda? Apparently, people who put it on their credit card do.) I have consistently spent this time abroad wandering around, getting lost on purpose for ten miles a day. I am slightly nervous about taking a trip abroad with M, in fact, as I tend to walk all day long and forget to do things like eat. Anyway, upon returning to the States (which is something I only ever call this country when referring to travel abroad,) I usually spend a few weeks trying to recapture this sense of leisurely adventure and walk everywhere and drink coffee without sweetener and people-watch. Which quickly wears off because for some reason, back in Chicago, this is not fun. Maybe because there are no hills, or because I sometimes use coffee as a snack between jobs, or because people here think you are creepy if you watch them…I don’t know, but I haven’t been able to make these habits stick. But then I got fired.
So forget the coffee and the people, I now have less money for gasoline and lots more time for things like wandering around. While this is motivated by a desire to bring Paris to Chicago, it is also to make up for those missing nine miles per week. (An average of three miles per shift, three shifts a week in case you didn't catch the math.) I don’t just like to move around on vacation, I love to move around in general, as evidenced by my inability to take on desk jobs in offices. I like that feeling of having used up all the energy I have in a way that makes the act of sitting become a treat. I do, however also like to write, and so after a couple of months of non-bar work and sitting in front of a computer in a way that makes sitting become a chore, my body revolted and told me to get moving. This may have also been spurred on in part by the fact that M and I saw Avatar this weekend and I am now overly concerned about ruining the planet. (If you haven’t seen it, it’s EXACTLY like Fern Gully, but with more creative science and less sing-along songs. And by "less," I mean none. Boo, Avatar. Boo.)
Anyway, I unfortunately began walking everywhere in earnest in one of the coldest weeks in January. In Chicago. So while it doesn’t totally matter to anyone else that I look professional or pretty or put-together in any way while I am making my way to the gym, it does kind of matter to me. Because walking in the kind of wind and cold that makes you feel like you are made out of mesh and that you want to wear a full-on face sock also makes me resemble Little Critter. Or a homeless person.
It was en route to the gym yesterday that I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of a building. My thoroughly static-ized hair was sticking out at impossible angles from my knit hat, the dark circles under my eyes embellished by my wind-chapped cheeks. My lips cracked and dry, I seemed to have crawled out of a ditch wearing an over-large ski jacket and a bewildered-to-desperate expression. The fact that I looked awful was one thing. The fact that this will be my default state until May is quite another. And this "another" thing is becoming annoying. I am at a high level of frustration with Chicago right now, from the woman who punched the hood of my car in December with her fist as she crossed the street, (yes I honked my horn at her, but she was also crossing the road in the middle of traffic with no crosswalk in sight in a dark jacket at night,) to the less than awesome public transportation that is getting slower and more unreliable every day. So I am trying to remember all of the things that I love about Chicago in order to elbow my way through the winter. Here are some of them in no particular order, other than the fact that they are numbered:
1. The view from the Brown line as it goes over the river.
2. The Art Institute
3. How excited everyone gets about warm weather.
4. How excited everyone gets about St. Patrick’s Day, even if this involves massive amounts of drunk morons.
5. 17.3 billion amazing restaurants. (I did not research this number. It is fake.)
6. The skyline.
There are more, but most of them involve the skyline in some way, as in “the holiday lights downtown.” As more of a native Chicagoan than I, M loves the skyline even more. I am convinced there is some kind of ratio to accompany my theory of residency to skyline love, but that would take more math than I am willing to give to this idea. Anyway, I like to find things to foster this love of Chicago skyscrapers as gifts for M. For his birthday a couple of years ago, I found a poster at a small boutique that featured a Chicago skyline constructed out of words from magazines. It is not as ransom-note-y as it sounds – the words are very small and they each describe something in the city. Words like “Wrigley,” or “Kimball” or “Hyde Park.” These words, and their varying colors, make a rainbow-flavored version of the Chicago skyline.
I met M in Chicago, so this gift was a little more than “here’s a picture of this place we both live in and love.” There are words in there that mean something directly to us, as “us” and not as “me” or “him.” I know this gift was a big hit because M began to pick out those words immediately. He has yet to actually hang it up, but to his credit, I have yet to hang up most of the artwork that belongs in my bedroom of 1.75 years. When we do get it on a wall though, it will help me feel more like a Chicagoan and less like a Critter.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
The Card Gift
When I travel I like to pretend I am native to wherever I am visiting at that time. While I am terrible at lying, I am pretty good at pretending, which is entirely different. I went to Paris for a wedding this summer and for a week and a half I pretended I couldn't speak English. It's like a little secret life I can explore for a bit - like what if I just all of a sudden wasn't an American? Usually this just results in lots of people asking me for directions.
This idea of wanting badly to blend in to unfamiliar landscapes began as a child of transplanted parents. (NOT parents who have had transplants, just parents who moved to the Midwest as fully formed, East Coast adults.) And as transplants, my parents still have strong roots in their native city, Boston. They also sometimes have strong accents. When I was little, I thought that you had a few choices for how to describe the piece of furniture that holds your clothes. You could say dresser, bureau, chest of draws, OR chest of drawers. I thought these were all entirely separate options. This continued until third grade, when the following happened:
Nice Classmate #1: "I like your purple sweatshirt with the gold metal stars sewn on it. Where did you get it?"
Me: "I don't know, I found it in my draws."
Mean Classmate #2: "Your WHAT?? You're stupid. And your crewneck sweatshirt is ugly."
OK, so maybe it didn't happen quite like this, but that is what it felt like. And I did have a purple crewneck sweatshirt with little gold metal stars sewn on it and I wore it ALL THE TIME. But the point is that this is the point when I began to notice that my parents pronounced things differently than other people's parents. Up until that point I had reasoned that this accent was just how old people sounded. We visited Boston every summer and spent almost all of our time with my dad's side of the family. And they were all extremely old. So I thought, you must just develop this weird way of talking when you reach a certain age.
My dad calls the Boston accent the "food-falling-out-of-your-mouth" dialect. Which is a more appropriate way of explaining it than just taking the Rs out of words, because as you listen, you find all those missing Rs in the wrong places. Like my aunt Ider (Ida). Anyway, my grandmother used to quiz me on my best Boston accent by giving me the well-known prompt: "Go park your car in Harvard yard." Go ahead, give it a try. You might want to practice with some food halfway out of your mouth.
She would also tell me I was "such a cahd." I write this with an H because there is the slightest trace of an R in a true Boston accent. Not an actual R, but like you know it's there and you pay homage to it in your head before you say the word. Anyway, being a cahd includes being a joker, a goofball, a hoot to be around. And everytime I write thank you notes I think of this. Not that my thank you notes are sooo funny, (even though I wish they could be,) but that I have a giant stack of cards and all I can think of is my grandmother saying the word cahd.
I am currently in the midst of writing Christmas thank you cards, and I am excruciatingly late in doing so. By writing them this late into the new year, I have also added a few other cards that I need to get out to various people. Which made me think of how I sometimes use cards as a gift in and of themselves. Sometimes I make my own cards by drawing a design, a cartoon or a funny phrase. Sometimes I also then scan it into the computer and print and copy it at (where else?) Kinko's. But most of the time I buy cards. I buy lots and lots of cards.
One of my favorite places in the world is the paper store down the street from me. I love looking at letterpress cards, hand-drawn cards, collage cards, photo cards, all kinds of cards. (This is a reference to one of my favorite children's books about all kinds of transportation -- "Big boats, small boats, tug boats, steam boats, all kinds of boats." Anyone? Just me? Naturally.) I like to buy a new set of thank you cards after every one of my birthdays. I also always visit the gift shop of every museum I visit to buy a card of the works of art I loved the most. I buy cards from galleries for the same reason. I frame card photos or painted cards as presents or decorations in my own home, but mostly I save the cards for an occasion to give that particular picture to someone.
I found an Henri Matisse painting as a card one time that I gave to my mom, who loves Matisse. I found a Chicago skyline card to give to M. I found a dancing woman card to give to my friend A-C, who is a dancer. I have found lots of giraffe cards to give to my dad. I also usually buy four different types of Holiday cards to send to friends, and I spend an hour or so making lists of which person will receive which type of card. Mostly this is because I am so addicted to beautiful stationery that I feel as though I have to buy up as many versions as I can so I will "have" the designs as my own. Partly it is because some cards really call out to be sent to certain people.
My ground rules for Holiday cards are as follows:
1. They have to say "holiday season" or "holidays" or "winter," as opposed to "Christmas." I feel it is better form.
2. They can't just have white people on them. I have broken this rule before, but in the past few years I have been more strict about it. I usually go in favor of polar bears, dogs or my favorite, snowmen. (Which are white, but I think you know where I'm going with this.) But if I choose a card with people, I try to go for either diversity or under-represented cultures.
3. They have to be different enough from the rest of the cards on the shelf that I can't walk away from them or that I can't stop myself from smiling while looking at them.
4. This one is optional, but I do prefer that they come in a box with their own image printed on it so that I can use the box for holiday decorations later.
After I buy the cards I take a sheet of paper and write columns for each type of card, and then a numbered list under each column with as many numbers as there are cards in that particular box. Then I fill in the numbered lists with the names of intended recipients from my Excel file of Holiday Addresses. This year I had one box of cards with a dog poking out of a pet door onto the porch of a wintry, woodsy home. His snout was rested near a pair of work boots. So I chose the twelve people from my master list whom I felt would most appreciate this photo of a dog. Unless they would appreciate the skipping polar bear with the shopping bag labeled "Peace" even more...
But you get the holiday-themed picture.
Even if my address book does not know how much Type A planning went into my holiday cards, I know that they are successful gifts of their own accord. To pick out cards that include everyone, that make all their choices and lives feel appreciated, and to subtly pick up on little things that you know about them specifically is a lovely way to celebrate your friends for the holidays. It blends in with you and it's still from me. And all the work behind that is like that secret life I have while traveling - what if I just happened to love all of these things too? Except here it isn't even pretending.
This idea of wanting badly to blend in to unfamiliar landscapes began as a child of transplanted parents. (NOT parents who have had transplants, just parents who moved to the Midwest as fully formed, East Coast adults.) And as transplants, my parents still have strong roots in their native city, Boston. They also sometimes have strong accents. When I was little, I thought that you had a few choices for how to describe the piece of furniture that holds your clothes. You could say dresser, bureau, chest of draws, OR chest of drawers. I thought these were all entirely separate options. This continued until third grade, when the following happened:
Nice Classmate #1: "I like your purple sweatshirt with the gold metal stars sewn on it. Where did you get it?"
Me: "I don't know, I found it in my draws."
Mean Classmate #2: "Your WHAT?? You're stupid. And your crewneck sweatshirt is ugly."
OK, so maybe it didn't happen quite like this, but that is what it felt like. And I did have a purple crewneck sweatshirt with little gold metal stars sewn on it and I wore it ALL THE TIME. But the point is that this is the point when I began to notice that my parents pronounced things differently than other people's parents. Up until that point I had reasoned that this accent was just how old people sounded. We visited Boston every summer and spent almost all of our time with my dad's side of the family. And they were all extremely old. So I thought, you must just develop this weird way of talking when you reach a certain age.
My dad calls the Boston accent the "food-falling-out-of-your-mouth" dialect. Which is a more appropriate way of explaining it than just taking the Rs out of words, because as you listen, you find all those missing Rs in the wrong places. Like my aunt Ider (Ida). Anyway, my grandmother used to quiz me on my best Boston accent by giving me the well-known prompt: "Go park your car in Harvard yard." Go ahead, give it a try. You might want to practice with some food halfway out of your mouth.
She would also tell me I was "such a cahd." I write this with an H because there is the slightest trace of an R in a true Boston accent. Not an actual R, but like you know it's there and you pay homage to it in your head before you say the word. Anyway, being a cahd includes being a joker, a goofball, a hoot to be around. And everytime I write thank you notes I think of this. Not that my thank you notes are sooo funny, (even though I wish they could be,) but that I have a giant stack of cards and all I can think of is my grandmother saying the word cahd.
I am currently in the midst of writing Christmas thank you cards, and I am excruciatingly late in doing so. By writing them this late into the new year, I have also added a few other cards that I need to get out to various people. Which made me think of how I sometimes use cards as a gift in and of themselves. Sometimes I make my own cards by drawing a design, a cartoon or a funny phrase. Sometimes I also then scan it into the computer and print and copy it at (where else?) Kinko's. But most of the time I buy cards. I buy lots and lots of cards.
One of my favorite places in the world is the paper store down the street from me. I love looking at letterpress cards, hand-drawn cards, collage cards, photo cards, all kinds of cards. (This is a reference to one of my favorite children's books about all kinds of transportation -- "Big boats, small boats, tug boats, steam boats, all kinds of boats." Anyone? Just me? Naturally.) I like to buy a new set of thank you cards after every one of my birthdays. I also always visit the gift shop of every museum I visit to buy a card of the works of art I loved the most. I buy cards from galleries for the same reason. I frame card photos or painted cards as presents or decorations in my own home, but mostly I save the cards for an occasion to give that particular picture to someone.
I found an Henri Matisse painting as a card one time that I gave to my mom, who loves Matisse. I found a Chicago skyline card to give to M. I found a dancing woman card to give to my friend A-C, who is a dancer. I have found lots of giraffe cards to give to my dad. I also usually buy four different types of Holiday cards to send to friends, and I spend an hour or so making lists of which person will receive which type of card. Mostly this is because I am so addicted to beautiful stationery that I feel as though I have to buy up as many versions as I can so I will "have" the designs as my own. Partly it is because some cards really call out to be sent to certain people.
My ground rules for Holiday cards are as follows:
1. They have to say "holiday season" or "holidays" or "winter," as opposed to "Christmas." I feel it is better form.
2. They can't just have white people on them. I have broken this rule before, but in the past few years I have been more strict about it. I usually go in favor of polar bears, dogs or my favorite, snowmen. (Which are white, but I think you know where I'm going with this.) But if I choose a card with people, I try to go for either diversity or under-represented cultures.
3. They have to be different enough from the rest of the cards on the shelf that I can't walk away from them or that I can't stop myself from smiling while looking at them.
4. This one is optional, but I do prefer that they come in a box with their own image printed on it so that I can use the box for holiday decorations later.
After I buy the cards I take a sheet of paper and write columns for each type of card, and then a numbered list under each column with as many numbers as there are cards in that particular box. Then I fill in the numbered lists with the names of intended recipients from my Excel file of Holiday Addresses. This year I had one box of cards with a dog poking out of a pet door onto the porch of a wintry, woodsy home. His snout was rested near a pair of work boots. So I chose the twelve people from my master list whom I felt would most appreciate this photo of a dog. Unless they would appreciate the skipping polar bear with the shopping bag labeled "Peace" even more...
But you get the holiday-themed picture.
Even if my address book does not know how much Type A planning went into my holiday cards, I know that they are successful gifts of their own accord. To pick out cards that include everyone, that make all their choices and lives feel appreciated, and to subtly pick up on little things that you know about them specifically is a lovely way to celebrate your friends for the holidays. It blends in with you and it's still from me. And all the work behind that is like that secret life I have while traveling - what if I just happened to love all of these things too? Except here it isn't even pretending.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
The Masterpiece Gift
In getting fired from the bar, the past two months have often felt like being thrown to the ground, or having the rug pulled out from under me, or other analogies that end in the mud. And partly I think this is wrapped up in the idea of failure. It is hard to explain the odd sensation of failing for me, especially in something at which I actually felt successful.
I didn't mean to overstay my welcome at the bar, as I clearly ended up doing. I finished my teaching commitment and needed some kind of income while I decided what came next. The bar was an easy way to make my teacher salary on three shifts a week, and while this in itself was a highly depressing commentary on how little we value educators in America, it freed me up to take on part-time work in various other fields. Some of this part-time work still includes independent contract work for two different teacher recruitment and training programs. For one, I interview applicants over the phone who want to teach in low income urban and rural communities. Mostly, these are people who are highly motivated and extremely intelligent. Sometimes, however, these are people who are not. A sample conversation from last week:
Me: "What do you think raising achievement levels in low performing schools will require of you to accomplish?"
Applicant #1: "Well, just to get them to trust me, show them that I care, love on them..."
Really? That might get you fired.
Applicants do have a chance to ask questions in this process, and the question that I got the most often in the 20 interviews I did last week was "what was the most difficult part of your first year teaching?" Which is kind of like asking someone who is drowning, "what is the hardest part of staying alive?" But, as the interviews progressed, it dawned on me that the warning we first year teachers received was also the best way to explain the difficulty of that first year: that first year would be the first time any of us would ever really FAIL at anything. And by all-caps FAIL, I mean land in the mud FAIL. I don't mean getting an F on a quiz, or bombing an audition. I mean, letting 28 students down who cannot afford to fall any further behind, while knowing that you are fully capable of not letting them down.
So in taking the job at the bar, I was also taking a break from that constant sense of not achieving enough. A break that allowed me to be very successful at something very easy. And then I somehow failed at that too.
Anyway, with this in mind, last night I went to a lecture on the idea of "masterpiece." The senior curator of 19th century sculpture at the Louvre, who let's be honest, is probably the closest thing to a real-life heroine that I could have, was in town and gave a lecture at my favorite place, the Alliance Française of Chicago. So this tiny, beautiful French woman who is internationally successful at her job in curating art for one of the largest and most important museums in the world, spoke about what constitutes a masterpiece, and how this definition varies from artist to artist, curator to curator, and generally cannot actually ever have a true definition. But, for her, she said masterpieces always showcase the skills of an artist. All of the skills. Everything the artist does well.
And this made me think of how often the most successful artists in the world have felt like complete and total losers. Imagine the level of FAIL you would have hanging over your head in trying to create a "masterpiece."Imagining this made me feel better. It also made me think of how much easier being successful is when there are no restrictions.
When I was about four or five years old, my mom bought an 8 X 10 inch canvas, some acrylic paints and a paintbrush and let me paint. I have no idea what I was thinking about as I painted, or if I intended it to look like something in particular. I do know that my mom put music on and told me my work was beautiful. The finished product made the perfect Father's Day present from us to my dad, the artist. My dad paints with acrylics and lots of colors, and this painting was several things at once to him: family support for his art, flattery in the form of imitation, and true creative expression. It was also a patchwork of blobs, but it was everything that I did well. It was a masterpiece.
The best part of this gift is not that it is a masterpiece. The best part is how it reflected the success of my dad to become a success in its own right. And this is what I am trying to recapture as I climb out of the mud.
I didn't mean to overstay my welcome at the bar, as I clearly ended up doing. I finished my teaching commitment and needed some kind of income while I decided what came next. The bar was an easy way to make my teacher salary on three shifts a week, and while this in itself was a highly depressing commentary on how little we value educators in America, it freed me up to take on part-time work in various other fields. Some of this part-time work still includes independent contract work for two different teacher recruitment and training programs. For one, I interview applicants over the phone who want to teach in low income urban and rural communities. Mostly, these are people who are highly motivated and extremely intelligent. Sometimes, however, these are people who are not. A sample conversation from last week:
Me: "What do you think raising achievement levels in low performing schools will require of you to accomplish?"
Applicant #1: "Well, just to get them to trust me, show them that I care, love on them..."
Really? That might get you fired.
Applicants do have a chance to ask questions in this process, and the question that I got the most often in the 20 interviews I did last week was "what was the most difficult part of your first year teaching?" Which is kind of like asking someone who is drowning, "what is the hardest part of staying alive?" But, as the interviews progressed, it dawned on me that the warning we first year teachers received was also the best way to explain the difficulty of that first year: that first year would be the first time any of us would ever really FAIL at anything. And by all-caps FAIL, I mean land in the mud FAIL. I don't mean getting an F on a quiz, or bombing an audition. I mean, letting 28 students down who cannot afford to fall any further behind, while knowing that you are fully capable of not letting them down.
So in taking the job at the bar, I was also taking a break from that constant sense of not achieving enough. A break that allowed me to be very successful at something very easy. And then I somehow failed at that too.
Anyway, with this in mind, last night I went to a lecture on the idea of "masterpiece." The senior curator of 19th century sculpture at the Louvre, who let's be honest, is probably the closest thing to a real-life heroine that I could have, was in town and gave a lecture at my favorite place, the Alliance Française of Chicago. So this tiny, beautiful French woman who is internationally successful at her job in curating art for one of the largest and most important museums in the world, spoke about what constitutes a masterpiece, and how this definition varies from artist to artist, curator to curator, and generally cannot actually ever have a true definition. But, for her, she said masterpieces always showcase the skills of an artist. All of the skills. Everything the artist does well.
And this made me think of how often the most successful artists in the world have felt like complete and total losers. Imagine the level of FAIL you would have hanging over your head in trying to create a "masterpiece."Imagining this made me feel better. It also made me think of how much easier being successful is when there are no restrictions.
When I was about four or five years old, my mom bought an 8 X 10 inch canvas, some acrylic paints and a paintbrush and let me paint. I have no idea what I was thinking about as I painted, or if I intended it to look like something in particular. I do know that my mom put music on and told me my work was beautiful. The finished product made the perfect Father's Day present from us to my dad, the artist. My dad paints with acrylics and lots of colors, and this painting was several things at once to him: family support for his art, flattery in the form of imitation, and true creative expression. It was also a patchwork of blobs, but it was everything that I did well. It was a masterpiece.
The best part of this gift is not that it is a masterpiece. The best part is how it reflected the success of my dad to become a success in its own right. And this is what I am trying to recapture as I climb out of the mud.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
The Muppet Gift
I am a Muppet freak. I am obsessed with all things Muppet. I have a giant poster in my bedroom closet that features all the recurring characters from The Muppet Show. It is in the closet as a secret surprise for me, as other people seem to find this obsession disturbing. I'll admit, arriving at a friend's apartment to find huge, felt, monster faces smiling down at you might be a little off-putting.
While M has fostered my love of puppet creatures, even buying me a book called Street Gang, about the development and history of Sesame Street (which I highly recommend,) he seems to find my breaking into Muppet-fueled songs slightly odd. Luckily, my brother, G, shares this habit with me. Between the two of us, we have associated over 20 songs with the Muppets and Muppets alone, often mistaking the vocals originated by famous people like Nat King Cole for tunes crafted by Jim Henson and company. For example, apparently "Tenderly" is a real song. Not a short, loud rant by a crazed Animal.
In August, M and I went to the wedding of one of my college friends, and she danced with her dad to "Time in a Bottle." And it was sung by Jim Croce, who I am fairly certain, was never a Muppet. I was shocked. That classic song, "Something's Happening Here," that features prominently in the Vietnam portion of Forrest Gump apparently does not have construction worker sounds at the end. In the Muppet version, the song is being sung by woodland creatures, before their habitat is torn down by bulldozers, and so the end is drowned out by "Hey, get out of the way!" and lots of shouting. This is not included in the Buffalo Springfield version.
Short of going through all of the songs G and I grew to love on our Muppet Show audio tapes, and the eventual confusion this caused for our knowledge of music history, I can't explain the depth of our relationship to the goofy felt creatures. To us, these are not just children's playthings, or a craze that we experienced as kids. To us, they still exist in a very real way. We had three Muppet Show tapes that we wore out listening to mostly in the car to and from Boston. We grew up as Midwestern kids of East coast adults. Almost every summer we traveled to Boston to visit family. And we took this trip by car. How my parents sat through 20 hours one way of Muppet tapes every year is beyond me, but in these repeated sessions, G and I absorbed every line, every note and every snide comment from our fuzzy friends. To the point that now we reference them as if they are classmates, or friends we catch up with every so often. If I were to mention someone named Lydia, I guarantee you my brother would launch into "Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia, Lydia the TA-ah-too-ed lady."
For Christmas a couple of years ago, G bought me a DVD box set of the first season of the Muppet Show, which I watch more often than I care to admit. Having spent most of our childhood hearing these songs and skits without watching them, these DVDs have been fascinating for both G and I. We have shared how we thought a certain song was performed by different Muppet, and sometimes we each had different Muppets in mind for the same sequence. Similar to the way your imagination works in reading a book and creating the setting and pictures in your head, hearing theater stimulates a different creative sense in a way that television cannot provide. This is the genius of marketing Muppets in audio form - it further pushes children's creativity.
The reason I mention all of this is that The Muppet Show is almost impossible to find in audio form currently. As my brother and I wore out our tapes and haven't even been able to find them in a million years, I have been looking for a way to get a CD of our favorite Muppet-y songs as a present. Last year, for Christmas, I found a compilation CD of the best of The Muppet Show and ordered it online from Borders, to be picked up in store. It doesn't have everything, but it does have "Mr. Bass Man," which is his favorite. I decided to pair this with our Christmas tradition, "Merry Christmas from Sesame Street," which we listen to every year, like we are 6 yrs. old. It is cheesy and lame, but it reminds me of little kid Christmases and how these voices were very much my friends for a long time. Hearing Prairie Dawn say, "Welcome, oh welcome to our lit-tle play," is like curling up in a blanket when you are very sleepy.
Anyway, all we have of this amazing Muppet-related holiday concert is a record that is falling out of its sleeve. We have listened to it so many times that the grooves have become trenches and it sounds like it was recorded at the dawn of radio. But apparently, a CD version of this does not exist. Neither do tapes, or anything that would bring this recording into at least 1988. Maybe this is due to the fact that the Children's Television Workshop has undergone a lot of changes in the past ten years, and that they release things very slowly and carefully. Or maybe it is because the idea of religious diversity has taken on a new importance since 1980 and the powers that be do not want to draw attention to a purely Christmas-themed album. Whatever the reason, its controversy or its politics, this record is non-existent in the world of music sales. So I turned to the Internet. Where I found a lovely fan site, listing all the tracks to "Merry Christmas from Sesame Street," for FREE. I downloaded them and made my own CD. I also downloaded the picture from the front of the album and printed it to use as the wrapping paper.
The best part of this gift is that it keeps the love my brother and I have for Muppets secure in that it keeps our mutual appreciation current. At Christmas this year, G and I broke into a rendition of "Simon Smith and His Dancing Bear," which we were told again, was not designed for Fozzie and Scooter, but originated from somewhere else entirely. We were yet again surprised, but not daunted. Give us even a veiled reference and we will break into song anew.
While M has fostered my love of puppet creatures, even buying me a book called Street Gang, about the development and history of Sesame Street (which I highly recommend,) he seems to find my breaking into Muppet-fueled songs slightly odd. Luckily, my brother, G, shares this habit with me. Between the two of us, we have associated over 20 songs with the Muppets and Muppets alone, often mistaking the vocals originated by famous people like Nat King Cole for tunes crafted by Jim Henson and company. For example, apparently "Tenderly" is a real song. Not a short, loud rant by a crazed Animal.
In August, M and I went to the wedding of one of my college friends, and she danced with her dad to "Time in a Bottle." And it was sung by Jim Croce, who I am fairly certain, was never a Muppet. I was shocked. That classic song, "Something's Happening Here," that features prominently in the Vietnam portion of Forrest Gump apparently does not have construction worker sounds at the end. In the Muppet version, the song is being sung by woodland creatures, before their habitat is torn down by bulldozers, and so the end is drowned out by "Hey, get out of the way!" and lots of shouting. This is not included in the Buffalo Springfield version.
Short of going through all of the songs G and I grew to love on our Muppet Show audio tapes, and the eventual confusion this caused for our knowledge of music history, I can't explain the depth of our relationship to the goofy felt creatures. To us, these are not just children's playthings, or a craze that we experienced as kids. To us, they still exist in a very real way. We had three Muppet Show tapes that we wore out listening to mostly in the car to and from Boston. We grew up as Midwestern kids of East coast adults. Almost every summer we traveled to Boston to visit family. And we took this trip by car. How my parents sat through 20 hours one way of Muppet tapes every year is beyond me, but in these repeated sessions, G and I absorbed every line, every note and every snide comment from our fuzzy friends. To the point that now we reference them as if they are classmates, or friends we catch up with every so often. If I were to mention someone named Lydia, I guarantee you my brother would launch into "Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia, Lydia the TA-ah-too-ed lady."
For Christmas a couple of years ago, G bought me a DVD box set of the first season of the Muppet Show, which I watch more often than I care to admit. Having spent most of our childhood hearing these songs and skits without watching them, these DVDs have been fascinating for both G and I. We have shared how we thought a certain song was performed by different Muppet, and sometimes we each had different Muppets in mind for the same sequence. Similar to the way your imagination works in reading a book and creating the setting and pictures in your head, hearing theater stimulates a different creative sense in a way that television cannot provide. This is the genius of marketing Muppets in audio form - it further pushes children's creativity.
The reason I mention all of this is that The Muppet Show is almost impossible to find in audio form currently. As my brother and I wore out our tapes and haven't even been able to find them in a million years, I have been looking for a way to get a CD of our favorite Muppet-y songs as a present. Last year, for Christmas, I found a compilation CD of the best of The Muppet Show and ordered it online from Borders, to be picked up in store. It doesn't have everything, but it does have "Mr. Bass Man," which is his favorite. I decided to pair this with our Christmas tradition, "Merry Christmas from Sesame Street," which we listen to every year, like we are 6 yrs. old. It is cheesy and lame, but it reminds me of little kid Christmases and how these voices were very much my friends for a long time. Hearing Prairie Dawn say, "Welcome, oh welcome to our lit-tle play," is like curling up in a blanket when you are very sleepy.
Anyway, all we have of this amazing Muppet-related holiday concert is a record that is falling out of its sleeve. We have listened to it so many times that the grooves have become trenches and it sounds like it was recorded at the dawn of radio. But apparently, a CD version of this does not exist. Neither do tapes, or anything that would bring this recording into at least 1988. Maybe this is due to the fact that the Children's Television Workshop has undergone a lot of changes in the past ten years, and that they release things very slowly and carefully. Or maybe it is because the idea of religious diversity has taken on a new importance since 1980 and the powers that be do not want to draw attention to a purely Christmas-themed album. Whatever the reason, its controversy or its politics, this record is non-existent in the world of music sales. So I turned to the Internet. Where I found a lovely fan site, listing all the tracks to "Merry Christmas from Sesame Street," for FREE. I downloaded them and made my own CD. I also downloaded the picture from the front of the album and printed it to use as the wrapping paper.
The best part of this gift is that it keeps the love my brother and I have for Muppets secure in that it keeps our mutual appreciation current. At Christmas this year, G and I broke into a rendition of "Simon Smith and His Dancing Bear," which we were told again, was not designed for Fozzie and Scooter, but originated from somewhere else entirely. We were yet again surprised, but not daunted. Give us even a veiled reference and we will break into song anew.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Project Gift
I have been very angry. It's a weird wiring system that I have, that when I am sad, I get frustrated, and when I am angry, I cry. So I have been very angry for almost two months. And so, I have been crying altogether too much. I feel picked apart and put upon and just generally that things are out of control. Let me rephrase: things are out of MY control.
There are lots of things about class systems that do not make sense to me. Most of all, why it is necessary to continually punish the very people who need the most help. This makes me a Socialist, you say? Why, yes. Yes it does. I do feel that there is a responsibility, as humans, to watch out for other people. To make sure everyone has a equal starting point. This does not mean I house homeless people in my apartment or that I do not buy new shoes in favor of donating money to charity. I am not a purist. I simply think that there are some things we should all be entitled to as citizens of a responsible country. Like quality education. And health care. And protection against the assumption that because you do not have very much money, you must be a moron.
I don't think I am a moron. In fact. I'm pretty sure that I am an anti-moron. I seem to be in the minority on this, however. My credit card apparently thinks I am a Grade A Imbecile because I think that raising the interest rate to an ungodly amount makes the opposite of sense. The unemployment office thinks that I am profoundly stupid for thinking that they intended to pay me the amount of money that I was actually making at my job, and not the amount of money on which they arbitrarily think I should be able to live. All of a sudden, I have met an inordinate amount of people who find me to be massively dumb.
I am trying to see this as karma that I am paying for in advance. I am hoping that I have a windfall coming to me and that for the universe to balance its karmic ledger, it just has to suck for me for a while. I am ignoring the possibility that I did something really awful, because I just cannot think of anything that measures up.
So under the assumption that I didn't do anything wrong, I also cannot fix it. Short of yelling into the phone, "STOP TREATING ME LIKE A SECOND CLASS PERSON. I AM REALLY SMART," there is not a lot of recourse. And yelling generally indicates some crazy anyway.
This lack of control and inability to fix my life has led to two realizations over the past two months.
1.) I am sick of crying.
2.) I am using projects as an outlet to gain control.
Mostly my projects of late have consisted of cooking and baking. Baking in particular has always been a source of satisfaction for me in times of chaos. I love taking separate ingredients to create something entirely different in shape, form and texture. I like the bowls and the wooden spoons and the act of mixing. I like putting on an apron and the yummy smells and standing in the kitchen for hours. Plus, following recipes means there is structure and if you read well enough, failure is rare.
This is why many of my gifts this season have included food. My most recent project, though has been my Christmas gift for my mom. This project, while food-related, is not edible. It is a calendar of sorts, detailing the freshest ingredient for each month of the year.
I have mentioned my obsession with Bon Appétit before, but I'm not sure I fully conveyed how much I rely on this perfect little publication. Last year, my friend L gave me a subscription to BA (as they call THEMSELVES, I didn't make this up,) for Christmas. L and I have exchanged several cookbooks and recipes and general food advice for years, but this may be the single best present anyone has ever given me. When I receive my latest BA edition, this is what I do: I read the magazine cover to cover. I bookmark every page that contains a recipe that I would like to try. I go back through the bookmarked pages with two different colors of Post-Its. I place a purple Post-It on all the pages with recipes that I would like to try this month for M and I. I place a blue Post-It on all the pages with recipes that I would like to try this month to give as gifts or bring to parties. I make a list of ingredients to buy at the store to make these recipes in order of how I will make them. Does it surprise you that my life feels out of control?
Also in BA is a section called "At The Market," in which they identify one ingredient "at its seasonal peak" and what to do with it. They show pictures of it, they list how to pick the freshest version and they include three or four recipes for it. A few months ago, I told my mom that I made Striped Sea Bass with roasted fennel and potatoes, and how it was amazing. I also mentioned how I had never even had fennel before. My mom said she had lately been going to the local organic market to try new vegetables for the first time. Like turnips. And so my project began forming itself in my head.
I decided to take the At The Market sections and turn them into some kind of calendar. But, as I get overwhelmed trying to make all the recipes I want to make each month, I decided not to include dates or weeks on the calendar so she can reuse it for as many season as she wants. I knew that if I copied the recipes, they needed to be separate so she could move around the kitchen with the recipe in hand or take it to the store to shop for ingredients. And, I knew that the print in the magazine was too small to make a useful calendar. So, I decided to plan for legal-size cardstock.
I started by taking black Post-Its and marking each At The Market section for each month. In looking at the pictures, I knew they wouldn't photocopy well, so I decided to draw each ingredient myself. I took out my sketch book, propped up one BA at a time against the arm of my couch, and drew a version of each vegetable and fruit in black ink. I wrote the name of the food and the name of the month where it belonged beside the picture. Then, I took the assorted magazines and photocopied all the pages I needed at Kinko's. I used plain white copy paper and literally cut and pasted each month's picture and text. I cut out the recipes and formatted each on an index card.
I searched for library pockets everywhere and had to default back to the teacher store, because apparently only teachers know the value of paper pockets that are self-adhesive. (Seriously, these are the most versatile office-related products you could ever own.) I went back to Kinko's and copied each month's page onto legal-size cardstock by enlarging my original pages by 120%. The only large cardstock they had was white. So, I copied the index cards onto multicolored cardstock. The library pockets I bought had stripes on them in five different colors, so I chose those five colors of cardstock and copied each month's recipes on an alternating color. I used the paper cutter at Kinko's for so long that I removed three layers of clothing. I left the large sheets of cardstock with my friends at Kinko's to have them bind the sheets at the top.
Finally, I picked up the bound calendar, affixed each library pocket to the bottom right corner of each sheet, slid each month's recipe cards in each pocket, and wrapped the whole thing. (Not all the cards fit, as my "formatting" was a little shoddy, so I had to do some trimming before that step was complete.) I found some mini kitchen tools at Crate and Barrel, like a powdered sugar spoon and a bamboo pot scraper, and a pretty recycled glass jar to put the tools in. All in all, this gift cost very little money. I was, however, basically living at Kinko's.
Anyway, my mom loved it. I know because she cried. The funny part is that she gave ME a calendar for Christmas -- made of photos she took in France two years ago. (This a common event in my family. We all give each other the same things.)
The best part about this gift is not just that it gave me something to do, something to control. Or that it made me feel smart and useful. (Although it DID.) The best part is that I was able to use a gift that I LOVE to create a new gift that my mom loves. It's like gift karma.
There are lots of things about class systems that do not make sense to me. Most of all, why it is necessary to continually punish the very people who need the most help. This makes me a Socialist, you say? Why, yes. Yes it does. I do feel that there is a responsibility, as humans, to watch out for other people. To make sure everyone has a equal starting point. This does not mean I house homeless people in my apartment or that I do not buy new shoes in favor of donating money to charity. I am not a purist. I simply think that there are some things we should all be entitled to as citizens of a responsible country. Like quality education. And health care. And protection against the assumption that because you do not have very much money, you must be a moron.
I don't think I am a moron. In fact. I'm pretty sure that I am an anti-moron. I seem to be in the minority on this, however. My credit card apparently thinks I am a Grade A Imbecile because I think that raising the interest rate to an ungodly amount makes the opposite of sense. The unemployment office thinks that I am profoundly stupid for thinking that they intended to pay me the amount of money that I was actually making at my job, and not the amount of money on which they arbitrarily think I should be able to live. All of a sudden, I have met an inordinate amount of people who find me to be massively dumb.
I am trying to see this as karma that I am paying for in advance. I am hoping that I have a windfall coming to me and that for the universe to balance its karmic ledger, it just has to suck for me for a while. I am ignoring the possibility that I did something really awful, because I just cannot think of anything that measures up.
So under the assumption that I didn't do anything wrong, I also cannot fix it. Short of yelling into the phone, "STOP TREATING ME LIKE A SECOND CLASS PERSON. I AM REALLY SMART," there is not a lot of recourse. And yelling generally indicates some crazy anyway.
This lack of control and inability to fix my life has led to two realizations over the past two months.
1.) I am sick of crying.
2.) I am using projects as an outlet to gain control.
Mostly my projects of late have consisted of cooking and baking. Baking in particular has always been a source of satisfaction for me in times of chaos. I love taking separate ingredients to create something entirely different in shape, form and texture. I like the bowls and the wooden spoons and the act of mixing. I like putting on an apron and the yummy smells and standing in the kitchen for hours. Plus, following recipes means there is structure and if you read well enough, failure is rare.
This is why many of my gifts this season have included food. My most recent project, though has been my Christmas gift for my mom. This project, while food-related, is not edible. It is a calendar of sorts, detailing the freshest ingredient for each month of the year.
I have mentioned my obsession with Bon Appétit before, but I'm not sure I fully conveyed how much I rely on this perfect little publication. Last year, my friend L gave me a subscription to BA (as they call THEMSELVES, I didn't make this up,) for Christmas. L and I have exchanged several cookbooks and recipes and general food advice for years, but this may be the single best present anyone has ever given me. When I receive my latest BA edition, this is what I do: I read the magazine cover to cover. I bookmark every page that contains a recipe that I would like to try. I go back through the bookmarked pages with two different colors of Post-Its. I place a purple Post-It on all the pages with recipes that I would like to try this month for M and I. I place a blue Post-It on all the pages with recipes that I would like to try this month to give as gifts or bring to parties. I make a list of ingredients to buy at the store to make these recipes in order of how I will make them. Does it surprise you that my life feels out of control?
Also in BA is a section called "At The Market," in which they identify one ingredient "at its seasonal peak" and what to do with it. They show pictures of it, they list how to pick the freshest version and they include three or four recipes for it. A few months ago, I told my mom that I made Striped Sea Bass with roasted fennel and potatoes, and how it was amazing. I also mentioned how I had never even had fennel before. My mom said she had lately been going to the local organic market to try new vegetables for the first time. Like turnips. And so my project began forming itself in my head.
I decided to take the At The Market sections and turn them into some kind of calendar. But, as I get overwhelmed trying to make all the recipes I want to make each month, I decided not to include dates or weeks on the calendar so she can reuse it for as many season as she wants. I knew that if I copied the recipes, they needed to be separate so she could move around the kitchen with the recipe in hand or take it to the store to shop for ingredients. And, I knew that the print in the magazine was too small to make a useful calendar. So, I decided to plan for legal-size cardstock.
I started by taking black Post-Its and marking each At The Market section for each month. In looking at the pictures, I knew they wouldn't photocopy well, so I decided to draw each ingredient myself. I took out my sketch book, propped up one BA at a time against the arm of my couch, and drew a version of each vegetable and fruit in black ink. I wrote the name of the food and the name of the month where it belonged beside the picture. Then, I took the assorted magazines and photocopied all the pages I needed at Kinko's. I used plain white copy paper and literally cut and pasted each month's picture and text. I cut out the recipes and formatted each on an index card.
I searched for library pockets everywhere and had to default back to the teacher store, because apparently only teachers know the value of paper pockets that are self-adhesive. (Seriously, these are the most versatile office-related products you could ever own.) I went back to Kinko's and copied each month's page onto legal-size cardstock by enlarging my original pages by 120%. The only large cardstock they had was white. So, I copied the index cards onto multicolored cardstock. The library pockets I bought had stripes on them in five different colors, so I chose those five colors of cardstock and copied each month's recipes on an alternating color. I used the paper cutter at Kinko's for so long that I removed three layers of clothing. I left the large sheets of cardstock with my friends at Kinko's to have them bind the sheets at the top.
Finally, I picked up the bound calendar, affixed each library pocket to the bottom right corner of each sheet, slid each month's recipe cards in each pocket, and wrapped the whole thing. (Not all the cards fit, as my "formatting" was a little shoddy, so I had to do some trimming before that step was complete.) I found some mini kitchen tools at Crate and Barrel, like a powdered sugar spoon and a bamboo pot scraper, and a pretty recycled glass jar to put the tools in. All in all, this gift cost very little money. I was, however, basically living at Kinko's.
Anyway, my mom loved it. I know because she cried. The funny part is that she gave ME a calendar for Christmas -- made of photos she took in France two years ago. (This a common event in my family. We all give each other the same things.)
The best part about this gift is not just that it gave me something to do, something to control. Or that it made me feel smart and useful. (Although it DID.) The best part is that I was able to use a gift that I LOVE to create a new gift that my mom loves. It's like gift karma.
The Host/Hostess Gift
Last year, my friend, A (I am starting to realize that my friends all have the same initials, so this pattern may have to come to an end,) made chocolate covered pretzels. She made them with little round pretzels, long stick pretzels and twisty pretzels. She made them with dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate. She made them with sprinkles, drizzles and candies. There were so many delicious pretzel combinations that they covered all the counters of the apartment shared by her boyfriend J, and my boyfriend, M. When we asked her, a.) what prompted this pretzel blitz and b.) if we could have some, she replied that they were hostess gifts for Christmas. And YES.
This was the first time I had ever heard the term "Hostess Gift." I know the basics, like when invited to a party, you should bring something with you. Or when you head to dinner at someone's house, you can't go wrong with a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers. (Well you CAN go wrong with either, but usually not at the same house.) What I didn't know is the practice of giving these tokens to the person hosting the get-together actually had a name. And, what's more, that making something entirely different for holiday-themed parties and events was common practice. I had, in fact, followed this procedure since I was little, but as my family did not host a lot of parties, had no idea this was a national phenomenon.
For the past few years, my default Host/Hostess Gift for the holiday season is my mom's recipe for caramel corn. This is my default present because it is my mom's default present too. Every Christmas my mom makes a ton of caramel corn to bring to friends and neighbors. And she makes enough that we can snack on it in the house, too. Eating caramel corn while it is still hot and melty is the absolute best. Now imagine my surprise, when opening this screen to type these words, I found my mom's EXACT recipe listed on my favorite food-related blog as the perfect thing to make this season. So I won't bother repeating the same ideas about how lovely and crunchy and gooey and salty-sweet the caramel corn is. You should read Orangette for that. I will suggest, however, that you try my mom's recipe with walnuts, as hers is written, instead of the peanuts listed there.
The thing about caramel corn that makes it especially great for Host/Hostess Gifts is that it is fairly easy and rather inexpensive to make, and you can make a lot at once. Most people I know have a glut of parties to go to in the month of December. Because caramel corn does not store for an extended period of time without going chewy, I usually make it in batches. So this year, I made a different batch each weekend to bring to that weekend's assorted get-togethers.
We brought caramel corn out to Iowa for a weekend stay with friends. The trip was to see Handel's "The Messiah," performed in part by one of our friends. But in seeing the show, we got to stay with our friends B and D, who have absolutely the most adorable daughter in the entire world. She is so smart and charismatic and beautiful that it makes me NOT want to have kids. Because they could never be that cute. Everyone assures me this is not true, but you haven't met this little girl. When we went to brunch, she wandered out of the room we were in, then ran back into the room with her arms raised overhead, grinning, and said, "Hellllooooo!"
We also brought caramel corn to M's godson's birthday party/Christmas party. As someone who does not like to share, and who makes her birthday an entire week-long event, I always think it must be hard to have a birthday while everyone else gets presents too. But Little M seemed entirely content with a party for the whole family. I was thoroughly impressed. But not one bit swayed to share for my own birthday.
And, we brought caramel corn to my favorite annual event, the "Elf" screening with A and J. A, of the pretzel factory, (and now her fiancé, J) hosts a holiday party every year where we watch Will Ferrell in yellow tights and eat things made from only the four main elf food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup.
Here's the thing about these holiday events -- last year I missed all of them. When at least one weekend night is used up working at a bar, you can only attend parties on the other of those nights. For one minute last week, I thought, I should try to pick up an extra shift this week so I have a little more money for Christmas presents. And then I remembered that I couldn't. That option to aid in my own financial situation has been cut off from me. Which made me sad. Kicked in the gut sad. But being able to go to all the parties I want takes the sting away. And in the end, I think bringing sticky sweets to the people I love is more important than being able to buy one extra present.
This was the first time I had ever heard the term "Hostess Gift." I know the basics, like when invited to a party, you should bring something with you. Or when you head to dinner at someone's house, you can't go wrong with a bottle of wine or a bouquet of flowers. (Well you CAN go wrong with either, but usually not at the same house.) What I didn't know is the practice of giving these tokens to the person hosting the get-together actually had a name. And, what's more, that making something entirely different for holiday-themed parties and events was common practice. I had, in fact, followed this procedure since I was little, but as my family did not host a lot of parties, had no idea this was a national phenomenon.
For the past few years, my default Host/Hostess Gift for the holiday season is my mom's recipe for caramel corn. This is my default present because it is my mom's default present too. Every Christmas my mom makes a ton of caramel corn to bring to friends and neighbors. And she makes enough that we can snack on it in the house, too. Eating caramel corn while it is still hot and melty is the absolute best. Now imagine my surprise, when opening this screen to type these words, I found my mom's EXACT recipe listed on my favorite food-related blog as the perfect thing to make this season. So I won't bother repeating the same ideas about how lovely and crunchy and gooey and salty-sweet the caramel corn is. You should read Orangette for that. I will suggest, however, that you try my mom's recipe with walnuts, as hers is written, instead of the peanuts listed there.
The thing about caramel corn that makes it especially great for Host/Hostess Gifts is that it is fairly easy and rather inexpensive to make, and you can make a lot at once. Most people I know have a glut of parties to go to in the month of December. Because caramel corn does not store for an extended period of time without going chewy, I usually make it in batches. So this year, I made a different batch each weekend to bring to that weekend's assorted get-togethers.
We brought caramel corn out to Iowa for a weekend stay with friends. The trip was to see Handel's "The Messiah," performed in part by one of our friends. But in seeing the show, we got to stay with our friends B and D, who have absolutely the most adorable daughter in the entire world. She is so smart and charismatic and beautiful that it makes me NOT want to have kids. Because they could never be that cute. Everyone assures me this is not true, but you haven't met this little girl. When we went to brunch, she wandered out of the room we were in, then ran back into the room with her arms raised overhead, grinning, and said, "Hellllooooo!"
We also brought caramel corn to M's godson's birthday party/Christmas party. As someone who does not like to share, and who makes her birthday an entire week-long event, I always think it must be hard to have a birthday while everyone else gets presents too. But Little M seemed entirely content with a party for the whole family. I was thoroughly impressed. But not one bit swayed to share for my own birthday.
And, we brought caramel corn to my favorite annual event, the "Elf" screening with A and J. A, of the pretzel factory, (and now her fiancé, J) hosts a holiday party every year where we watch Will Ferrell in yellow tights and eat things made from only the four main elf food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup.
Here's the thing about these holiday events -- last year I missed all of them. When at least one weekend night is used up working at a bar, you can only attend parties on the other of those nights. For one minute last week, I thought, I should try to pick up an extra shift this week so I have a little more money for Christmas presents. And then I remembered that I couldn't. That option to aid in my own financial situation has been cut off from me. Which made me sad. Kicked in the gut sad. But being able to go to all the parties I want takes the sting away. And in the end, I think bringing sticky sweets to the people I love is more important than being able to buy one extra present.
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